LootFeed — interface and interaction design
A small celebration that doesn't become a second inventory
The feed is meant to be noticed briefly, not always visible. Standard entries are dark, compact rows that show a recognisable item icon, rarity-colored title and stack count. Coin drops use simple denominations; real Quest Items get a discreet golden label. Items pass through a smooth pop, slide and fade rather than suddenly appearing as chat-line text.
The initial September 8 version deliberately allowed only five ordinary rows. This constraint preserves screen space and keeps a busy looting moment from turning into a permanent inventory summary.
Positioning and timing
The green anchor handle becomes interactable with /lfeed unlock. The player drags it to a preferred side of the interface and locks it afterward. Scale ranges 0.6–1.8; duration ranges 2–20 seconds; the stack can build upward or downward. These settings are account-wide, not per-character.
Hovering an item reveals the game's tooltip while pausing the entire visual stack. That turns a fast notification into inspectable information without a separate details panel. An item whose client cache is still loading falls back to textual/icon placeholders and refreshes when more data arrives.
The gold Quest Item label relies on the actual game's tooltip binding text, not on guessing which items a current quest needs.
Roll details should remain inspectable
Group rolls don't fit in the five-row constraint. They can last longer than a standard loot notification and need room for people and numbers to arrive in stages. The design therefore creates additional roll rows that remain while unresolved, show a drawn five-pip die, and keep the winner near that die when known.
Hovering over the dice opens a compact detailed list of Need/Greed/Pass choices and numeric rolls, including waiting/unknown states. The built-in game Need/Greed/Pass dialog remains the place where the player makes a choice; LootFeed is observational only.
Two important UI messages resist false precision:
- Simultaneous identical item drops can be ambiguous because item-link chat messages don't identify the unique roll.
- A deadline without a received winner becomes result unavailable, which may later update if a real message arrives.
Behavioral surprises requiring usability review
The source automatically turns on the game's detailed showLootSpam option when it was off so the roll details can be received. That has an effect beyond LootFeed's own tiny interface. The optional /lfeed chat off also wraps a global chat handler to hide personal loot lines, which may affect interaction with other addons using the same handler.
These are implemented choices, not silently approved future changes. Decide whether a clear opt-in/explanation for the game CVar would better support the creator's direction after an actual in-game test.
Accessibility tests still outstanding
Test small-scale text contrast, accessible alternatives to color-only rarity distinctions, animation sensitivity, hover-to-pause discoverability, 24px dice-hit targets and busy simultaneous roll displays. No such test was run in this documentation session and no redesigned interface was implemented.
Document information
Creator and creative director: Babuni.dev.